


New Horizons

by Setcheti



Series: Outward Bound [3]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5444090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a month in the Restricted Zone with rumors flying and no resolution in sight, Commander Sanchez decides his captain needs a good talking-to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Horizons

Chris was staring at the monitor on his desk but not really seeing it when his door buzzed. “Come in.” 

The door hissed open, a slight flaw in the pneumatic circuitry making it sound like it was wheezing slightly with effort. Sanchez spared a frown for it before coming into the room and standing almost at attention. “Captain, I have that report ready for you.” 

“Good.” Larabee sighed and gestured him to a chair. “Sit down, you’re supposed to stay off that leg.” 

Sanchez grinned. “I never say no to an opportunity to relax – but my leg is fine, bone all back in one piece, even the swelling is gone. Dr. Jackson is just a fusser, that’s all.” A slight scowl crossed Larabee’s face and the security chief shook his head as he settled himself into his chair. “Captain…” 

“I know, I know.” Chris blew out a frustrated breath. “You want me to let him out.” 

“I want you to think about how long it’s appropriate to keep a man detained in his quarters because he did something stupid,” the older man corrected evenly. “It’s been a month, Chris.” 

“Yeah, it has.” There was no give in Larabee’s voice, however. “It’s been a month since he disobeyed my orders and broke half the regulations in the book – and it’s been a month that we’ve been out here where we don’t belong, too.” He looked up, though, and Sanchez could see the heavy burden of their situation in his shadowed turquoise eyes. “What happened two days ago…” 

“Could just as easily have happened in Federation space,” the security chief told him. “You’ve read the logs Kirk transferred over to us before we left, he wouldn’t have even considered what happened to be an incident.” 

“I’m not Kirk. Kirk’s a born explorer.” Larabee shook his head. “I’m not an explorer, Josiah. I never wanted to be one, I just wanted to fly. Buck is the explorer.” 

“Then promote him and let him lead the away teams,” Sanchez suggested. “Although you’ll probably have a cat fight between he and Ezrastas about that – our first officer is an explorer too.” Another slight grimace. “No, now that needs to stop too,” he scolded the younger man. “It isn’t his fault or Tanner’s and you know it, but you’ve still been cool toward them both lately. And don’t say they should have told you what was going on, because they weren’t supposed to tell anyone.” 

“Don’t you think I know that!” Larabee scrubbed a hand over his face. “I just wish Ezrastas would have trusted me.” 

“He did – he does,” the security chief informed him. “He trusted you enough to serve under you without his disguise, didn’t he? And it was the admiral who posted him here, so obviously Travis trusted you too. But how was Ezrastas supposed to know who was or wasn’t in on that whole mess our good doctor kicked off, hmm? For all he knew Dr. Jackson had convinced you he was a danger to the ship just like he’d convinced me, and considering what he knew was waiting for him back on Vulcan…” 

“Yeah. I still can’t believe that, I’d always thought the Vulcans were…above that sort of thing.” 

“So they’ve led us all to believe,” Sanchez said. “But you know what? I started digging around in the historical archives and found out that they’ve been this way the entire hundred-odd years Earth has been closely involved with them. As a matter of fact, from the way some of the records read it was incidents like this one that kept them from interacting too much with us until recently. Those early ships that set out on Starfleet’s first discovery missions learned that the Vulcans weren’t to be trusted and the captains started refusing to work with them.” 

“So they took their toys and went home, yeah.” Larabee snorted. “I’ve read some of those old logs myself; there at the beginning of the exploration program they were actively trying to hold Earth back. Some of it was…ugly.” 

“It still is.” The security officer settled back in his chair, a very intense look in his pale blue eyes. “Chris, you can’t let this get to you. The crew is looking to you as their example of how to handle our current situation, and I have to tell you that I’m starting to get concerned. Only the command staff knows what actually happened, so the rumor mill has been filling in the blanks and some of the stories floating around are beginning to turn nasty.” 

Larabee raised an eyebrow. “Turn nasty how? I haven’t heard anything.” 

“You haven’t been talking to your officers.” It was a scold, but from Sanchez and in private Larabee would take that; the man had ten years on him and was still surviving in the most dangerous job you could have on board a starship – and he had a record of keeping the men both above and below him alive too, something that had up and coming security officers jockeying to serve under him. Not to mention that Sanchez, the son of a preacher, had a reflective, philosophical bent to his thinking that Larabee appreciated. He was getting the benefit of that now. “Actually, you haven’t been talking to anyone lately,” the security chief concluded. “And that has to change, sooner and not later.” 

“You think I should tell the crew everything?” Larabee wanted to know. It was an honest question, not a sarcastic one. “Because I think that could cause more problems than it solves. We’d probably have people wanting to turn the ship around and hand Ezrastas over just so they could go home.” 

“You have people wanting to do that now – and with Jackson too,” Sanchez pointed out, surprising him. “I told you, the rumors aren’t good right now and they’re getting worse. You’re going to have to give them something to settle it.” He sighed and shook his head. “And it didn’t help any that I had to tell my four they were to consider all Vulcans except our first officer to be a threat until I told them otherwise.” 

Now Larabee’s scowl was for him. “Talk about starting a rumor! Why did you tell them that?” 

“Because it’s true.” Sanchez shrugged. “For the duration of our ‘mission’, Captain, the Vulcans are our enemies. And we don’t know how determined they might be to get our unusual brother back; I won’t endanger my people by leaving them completely in the dark. They also know that Dr. Jackson isn’t to be considered a threat to anyone except Lieutenant Commander Ezrastas.” 

Larabee just stared at him for a moment…and then he slumped a little further in his seat. “And that is the crux of our problem, isn’t it? But is he a threat, really?” 

“I don’t know,” was the thoughtful answer. “Nathan is…well, he’s stubborn, and he doesn’t like to be wrong. I’ve been talking to him some, and he’s tried to convince me a few times now that we have no way of knowing if the Vulcans have a good reason for what they’re doing – he’s had too much time to think about it all, you see, isolated the way he has been. And I think that’s the threat he might pose, not something physical but more of a contagious bad attitude. There’s also the possibility that some of the crew might not be comfortable trusting him, but that’s a problem that’s only going to get worse the longer you keep him locked up.” 

“I’m not sure it can get worse,” was Larabee’s answer. “Because if I can’t trust him around one crewmember – and you just said it yourself, you consider him a potential threat to Ezrastas – then how can I trust him around the rest of them? He turned on my first officer because the man was different in a way that Jackson couldn’t accept, what if he takes a dislike to someone else for the same sort of reason? Will he act on that? That’s what I want to know.” 

Josiah nodded. “That’s a valid concern. I have to admit I’ve been wondering…well, I noticed that when he did his last regular check of the crew’s medical records he spent more time going over Commander Tanner’s than anyone else’s; he was digging pretty deep into the files, too, and cross-referencing with a vengeance. I didn’t stop him, but I kept a record of everything he called up in the database and it looked to me like he was trying to find evidence of mental instability in our chief engineer.” He held up one large hand before Larabee could comment. “But I’m not saying I think Dr. Jackson is a threat to Tanner, not at all; I think he’s trying to use Tanner to prove himself right about Ezrastas by proving that their ‘connection’ has had some negative mental repercussions. And lately I’ve also noticed him looking very closely at the regulations concerning treason, mutiny and insubordination.” 

The captain snorted, a touch of his usual wry humor making a reappearance. “I don’t think there’s an officer on this ship who hasn’t technically been insubordinate at one point or another, but they all know where the line is and none of them has ever crossed it yet, not even Buck.” He sighed. “Or at least, no one _had_ ever crossed it until Jackson did.” 

“It could have been worse,” Sanchez told him. “He could have committed treason.” 

Larabee snorted again. “He came damn close as it was.” He checked the time and stood up. “Well, no time like the present, I guess. We’re just about between shifts, I’ll make a shipwide announcement from the bridge and clear up things with the crew.” 

Sanchez stood as well. “What are you going to say?” 

“They don’t need to know the dirty details,” the captain told him. “And I’m not at liberty to share most of them anyway, this is so far beyond classified I don’t even want to think about the debriefing we’ll have to go through when we get back. I’ll just give them the bare bones; it’s basically a political wrangle between the Federation and Vulcan that we just happened to get caught in the middle of, and as soon as they’ve got it settled the _Outward Bound_ will be recalled from her current classified mission and we’ll go back to our regular duties.” 

“That’ll be a good start,” Sanchez approved. “I’d say anything beyond that we can deal with individually. And what about Dr. Jackson?” 

“I’ll go talk to him tonight – after I’ve had a chance to look at those records of yours, I want to know what he’s thinking before I go in there. And after that…” He sighed. “Well, what happens after that depends on him.” 

“Understood, Captain. We’ll keep up the surveillance until you rescind the order – even if you do let him out.” 

“If you can, that could tip the scales a little further in his favor for getting free run of the ship again,” Larabee said, frowning as the door wheezed at him on his way out. “You’re right though, it’s been a month and it’s time I did something to start putting things back together – for everyone. I might not like it, but hopefully the crew will be excited about their new mission to explore forbidden territory and possibly expand the boundaries of the Federation.” 

“I think they will,” Sanchez rumbled, following him out. “And I think you might like it more than you expect. We’re facing a new horizon, all of us.” 


End file.
